However, Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners, said such concerns could be overdone: "Much is made in current difficult global economic markets about the prospect of defence cuts, particularly in the US.
In spite of Republican efforts, the prospect of defence cuts has failed to take off as an election issue, in the main because the top concern of voters is unemployment.
Given the prospect of a defence budget under strain for years to come, the army fears it will be the target for any piecemeal cuts that may have to be made.
Those first, slightly farcical six minutes, when Scotland gift-wrapped three tries and 21 points, showed just how unhinged a side, even at Test level, can become by the prospect of aggressive defence.
"To elect a person to the ICC who doesn't even have a law degree for example, is a most unfortunate precedent to have set," said Pace. "We were facing the prospect of a defence lawyer appealing a case on the basis that the judge was not qualified".
Rather we must embrace reliable forms of cognitive enhancement in the hope and reasonable expectation that they are our best prospect of self-defence, including whatever element of self-defence may eventually result from moral enhancement.
But the prospect of cuts in defence budgets, in the US in particular, mean the outlook continues to uncertain.
This coincided with the end of decolonisation and the relative rise in confidence of the developing world, which created, for the first time, the prospect of a successful defence of its interests.
South Australia is in tough and uncertain economic times caused by a trifecta of industry withdrawals, including the shelving of a long planned $25bn expansion at Olympic Dam, the loss of jobs in the car industry and the prospect of seeing massive defence contracts move offshore.
Ominously for the home team, Scotland have Steven Fletcher back in the fold, the striker no doubt lured back by soothing words from Craig Levein and the prospect of facing a Welsh defence that looked utterly clueless during the 6-1 defeat by Serbia last time out.
THE divorce has been so long in the making that few eyebrows were raised when Lord Drayson, the defence-procurement minister, said he was "relaxed" at the prospect of BAE Systems, Britain's biggest defence contractor, leaving the country.
